Actiontec MOCA : A Products Guide

I am a great fan of MOCA, the networking technology standard that uses the home's coax grid to carry network and Internet signal. Coax is the cable type that carries your cable TV. After being disappointed with the HomePlug technology that does the same using the home's electrical wiring grid, I am glad there is MOCA. I have yet encountered a major issue with MOCA with the exception of one time when it interferes with DVR. Given that most homes in the urban areas have cable TV, or at least coax cables running in the walls, the homes are ready for MOCA. All you need is the appropriate MOCA devices.

The MOCA specification is now version 2, ratified over 2 years ago. Yet, I have not seen any MOCA products certified for it. I am not sure what is the hold up. Amazingly given how well MOCA works, there are only few manufacturers of MOCA devices. Actiontec and D-Link are the only ones I know of. I do not use D-Link stuff because devices from Actiontec have worked so well.

You can setup an Actiontec MOCA relay using these various devices. Because you would need at least 2 MOCA devices to start, the best and cheapest way to get things going is getting this Actiontec Ethernet to Coax Adapter Kit ECB2500CK01 which consists of a pair of identical ECB2500C devices. If you need a third device, then you would just get one more device. Again, as a lone device, it's called ECB2500C.


This is what I use when I already have a router on hand. This ECB2500CK01 kit only acts as a relay of the signal within the coax wiring. They do not have routing, DHCP, nor wifi capability. They basically act like a glorified network cable. You can setup encryption on these devices so the data transmitted between them are encrypted in case someone with other MOCA devices within the same coax grid eavesdrops on the signal even by accident. Inter-devices encryption is done with a Windows utility that can be downloaded from the Actiontec website.

The ECB2500C only has 1 network jack, so if you want additional jacks, you would use one of these (click on the image for bigger view):

Actiontec ECB3500T Ethernet over Coax Network Adapter. Basically, the ECB3500T acts like an ECB2500C, but it has 3 additional network ports. I am not clear on whether the ports are gigabit or not. The ECB2500C's lone network port maxes out at 100mbps.
http://www.actiontec.com/products/datasheets/Trika_ECB3500T_DATASHEET.pdf

At this writing, Amazon also sells model ECB3500T01. I think this is the same as ECB3500T.

So what if you want the functionality of the ECB3500T, but with wifi included. Then you would get this:

WCB3000NK01 or WCB3000N (click on the image for bigger view)
The WCB3000NK01 is a kit that consists of an ECB2500C and a WCB3000N. The WCB3000N is basically a MOCA wireless access point.

http://www.actiontec.com/products/datasheets/wcb3000ndatasheet_finalwb.pdf

Below is a link to a review of another MOCA device made by Netgear. It's an old review on a product that seems to have been discontinued. As said, I am puzzled as to why this technology has not become popular.

http://tinyurl.com/netgear-moca-review

Further reading by someone who wrote a detailed piece on his experience with MOCA can be found here:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2239404